


Angel

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Case Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 12:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12035463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: This is Rob and Laura Petrie’s second case. I have no idea where this came from. It’ a bit weird and no doubt has more plot holes than the spongiest X-File ep. It’s long, so you can keep reading under the cut.Written for the prompt: I don't know why I married you.





	Angel

She stood on the threshold and ripped through his shirt with the pinking shears. The fabric shredded, leaving strands of cotton floating to the ground along with the sleeves, collar and body. When she finished, she turned to the pile behind her and found the dress pants. Charcoal grey, well-cut, heavy. She took the point of the blades and dug in, snipping a triangular shape out of the crotch.  
“I don’t know why I married you!” she yelled over her shoulder. “You fucking fucker,” she added for good measure.  
His footsteps down the wooden staircase were punctuated with the curse words he favoured. She looked out across the immense front lawn, beyond the upright and sensible white rose bushes, the flowering clematis and trimmed hedges to see the Cartwrights, arm in arm on their own doorstep.  
“What the hell are you doing with my Armani?” He grabbed one trouser leg and yanked it from her. She held on to the other leg but the scissors clanged to the ground, making a nest in the pile of shirts.  
“I’m doing what I should have done years ago,” she hissed. “Cutting you out!”  
Fred Cartwright had made it to the front gate, pushed through the ornate metal and strode to the front door.  
“Having a little domestic trouble here, I see.” He smiled and reached out to take the pants. “Why don’t we head inside and see if we can’t work it out,” he looked over his shoulder as Valerie Cartwright arrived, “privately.”  
Scully picked up the pile of clothes and walked them upstairs, placing them on the bed and folding what was left into a suitcase. She parked it at the bottom of the closet and headed to the en-suite for a shower.  
Hot water ran down her back and she relished the slightly-too-hot spray for longer than was ecologically-friendly. There was something so satisfying about cutting up clothes and she sifted through her memories to see if there was a source point for that feeling. She couldn’t recall her mother doing it to her father’s wardrobe. Theirs had been a love true and enduring; she could half-entertain the notion that Tara might have done it to Bill’s clothes, but she couldn’t imagine him telling her and she hadn’t talked with Tara that closely for a few years. It was a mystery, but an enjoyable one.  
She didn’t hear the door open but she did feel the momentary draught. She turned and rubbed water from her eyes, to see Mulder standing stark naked in front of the door. He smiled. She shook her head. He pouted. She rolled her eyes. He opened the door. She stepped aside and took the razor from the side.  
“Can I help you with that, Scully?”  
“You want to shave me?”  
He grinned. “It’s a bit of a kink of mine.”  
“You, with kinks, Mulder? I don’t believe it.”  
He took the razor and held it up.  
“Maybe next time,” she said and pinched it back.  
“Always ready to serve you, Scully.”  
He laughed, then looked down at her with that expression on his face and she knew she wasn’t getting out of there without calf-strain, hickeys where nobody else would see them and at least two orgasms.  
He did cook her dinner – one of the many surprisingly good dishes in his repertoire. Chicken fillet stuffed with mozzarella and avocado with mushroom sauce on a bed of basmati rice. He poured a pinot grigio and offered her the pepper shaker.  
` “So are the Cartwrights the prime suspects, Scully?”  
“I guess I’d better be on high alert, now that I’ve shown my true colours, Mulder. Wouldn’t want the neighbourhood to suffer from an unusually high divorce rate, would we?”  
He chuckled over a mouthful of chicken. “No, an abnormally high number of missing persons reports is a much more digestible statistic. Three halves of couples in five years simply vanishing is more than an anomaly. The Cartwrights, and their neighbour, a Miss Lethbridge, have been here longer than the other residents. But there’s never been any evidence against them.”  
The cool wine was going down too well, the comfort of playing house, she sat back in her chair and smiled at him, still smug from the shower. “So, what’s the next step? A blazing row on the lawn? Snipping off the heads of the roses?”  
“Only if we can have a very public making-up session, Scully.” He leant forward and planted a kiss on her mouth.  
“I think Valerie Cartwright would have a stroke if she witnessed that kind of activity. I can’t imagine that pair has so much as held hands in the past ten years.”  
He smirked. “Then let’s give them something stroke-worthy.”

She picked an aqua blue bikini and placed a floppy-brimmed sunhat at a jaunty angle. She donned her large-framed sunglasses, slipped on her flip-flops, tucked a Mills and Boon novel under her arm and stopped at the fridge to pour a glass of sparkling wine. The sun was beating down, the lounger was bright white, the beach towel was in-your-face red and she’d cranked up the music from the CD player in the lounge room. The French doors were wide open, flimsy nets flying in the breeze.  
The trap was set.  
Two songs in and just as she was getting to the raunchy part of the book, Mulder stalked out, yelling at the top of his lungs.  
“Why are you out here with no clothes on, you floozy.”  
She rolled over and bent one leg up. She tipped her sunglasses forward and winked at him. He tried so hard not to smile.  
“I’ve told you before about this kind of behaviour. You’re embarrassing yourself and you’re embarrassing me. This has got to stop, Laura!”  
He looked out over the fence and back to her, giving her a sly nod.  
“I am proud of my body, Rob. So are you. And I will not cover myself up in my own yard.”  
He bent down and picked up her bikini top, holding up above his head, just as Fred Cartwright appeared at the gate. He peered over and inspected the situation. When his gaze stopped at Scully, bare-breasted on her towel. His mouth dropped open and she chose that moment to smile.  
She saw out of the corner of her eye Mulder’s trembling lips and she willed him to stuff that laugh back into his mouth. Fred saved the day.  
“Mrs Petrie, I beg of you, on behalf of the rest of the neighbourhood, to cover yourself up at once. Your shamelessness is astounding and you are humiliating your husband.”  
By this time, Mrs Cartwright had arrived and she squealed when she saw Scully.  
“Fred!” she said, her hands flying up to her face. “What is going on here! Why are you looking at this…this tramp.”  
Mulder swung round. “Don’t call my wife a tramp, you old battleaxe.”  
Fred’s face reddened with rage. “How dare you insult my wife, you arrogant hypocrite.”  
Scully stood up, her breasts bobbing. It was unbelievably liberating. “This is my yard and I’ll wear what I like.”  
Veronica glared at her. “You’re not wearing anything.”  
Mulder stood next to Scully, pulling her to him. It was reassuring in a sexual way and she felt her nipples peak, much to Fred’s utter delight. Veronica elbowed him. “Laura is beautiful, inside and out. You cannot come to our house and say these things to her.”  
“You called her a floozy yourself,” Fred said, his eyes scanning Scully.  
“I can call my wife what I like.” He straightened up, chest puffed.  
Veronica held onto Fred’s elbow as he cleared his throat. “We will not tolerate such louche behaviour in our street.”  
“You and who else, Fred? Are you the deputy? The law?” Mulder moved closer, almost butting Fred’s chest.  
“Mr Petrie,” Fred said. “I’m warning you. There are heavy consequences for behaviour like this.”  
For the fourth time, Scully declined Mulder’s offer to rub moisturiser into her chest to soothe her burnt skin.  
“You need to be careful tomorrow, Scully.”  
“I know, Mulder. How long will you be at the field office?”  
He shrugged. “I need to check those files that are being sent over from DC. I’ve seen something like this before. I’ll be as quick as I can but hopefully it will be long enough to see if anyone bites.”  
“Did you see Miss Lethbridge? She was enjoying the spectacle.”  
“You can barely see anything above the monstrous growth of plants in her garden. But she was the one who reported the last victim missing. In her report to the police she described the woman as an angel who deserved better.”  
“Did she mean better than Cecilia Burdenstock’s husband? Who was discovered to have had a string of affairs.”  
Mulder shrugged. “Probably. But it’s not about the partners who remain. I think this perpetrator is trying to save the victims.”  
She looked at him. “By abducting them?”  
“By freeing them.”  
She stood in the driveway and yelled “don’t make me wait until dark to see you again!” and if that wasn’t enough Mulder made sure everybody in the court knew that he was heading out, leaving a tyre streak on the road as he rounded the corner.  
Scully waited.  
The knock on the door was light, suggesting that Fred Cartwright was not her visitor. Standing on her doorstep was Miss Lethbridge with a tray of cookies in her hand and a kindly smile on her face.  
“I hear you’ve been having trouble with our nasty neighbours. They’ve been telling the rest of us just how awful you two are. So, I’d love to have a cup of tea with you and find out just how awful you are.”  
The woman was clearly old – her fingers were arthritic and her shoulders bunched under her loose dress. The back of her neck was unusually downy, grey hairs sprouting out from the collar. Her eyes were unsettlingly bright.  
“Those Cartwrights are such party poopers. In my day we’d all walk around naked together. No shame. Just freedom.”  
“You were a hippy? On a commune?” Scully asked. She nibbled the cookie, relishing the sweet white chocolate melting on her tea-warmed tongue.  
Miss Lethbridge smiled and bit into a cookie. “There are so many tales I could tell you dear, but we don’t have much time.”  
“I’d love to hear them,” Scully said. “But you’ve got somewhere else to be?”  
“Oh, we both do, my angel. We both do.”  
Scully frowned as Miss Lethbridge stood up. Her vision narrowed until she saw only black pinpricks. She fumbled for her phone but she couldn’t see it, feel it or even remember where it might be.  
Mulder chatted with the deputy for a while, went through the files he’d ordered to be faxed to the station, found what he was looking for and fished out his phone to call Scully. He hated when she didn’t reply. It was an automatic gut-churning response, even though most of the time there was a simple answer. He headed for the car and tried her again.  
When Scully came to she knew she was at Miss Lethbridge’s house. What she couldn’t work out was how she’d got there. The smell of the flowers and plants in the hot-house was overpowering, heady and fruity. All around her there were towering grasses with feathery flowers stretched out and up the roof, like Pampas grass. She was tied to a rattan chair from which she could easily escape if her arms and legs hadn’t felt so heavy and if Miss Lethbridge wasn’t standing in front of her coiled and ready. There was no light, no windows, no air. Scully’s breath came in hard spurts as she wriggled her wrists behind her.  
“My angel, you’re back with me. How lovely you are.” The old woman ran her fingers through Scully’s hair. The skin of her wrist touched Scully’s face and it felt warm and moist, like it might ooze down her face.  
“Who are you?” Scully asked, her voice thick with fatigue. “What are you?”  
Miss Lethbridge laughed. “I am your saviour. You are my angel.”  
Scully flinched as the old woman stroked her cheeks and chin. Her face felt clammy. “Are you going to save me like you saved the others? What did you do to them? Where did you take them?”  
“They didn’t have to go far. They are still with us. I am merely the conduit. I am the giver of life. You are special, Laura. You know that. Others have already told you. I am here to make sure their prophecies will come true.”  
Scully looked around but all she saw was greenery. “What is this place? Where am I?”  
“You are in my world of plants, they are the key, Laura. They live for us; we live because of them. What I do is preservation.”  
“What you do is illegal. My partner is looking for me.”  
Miss Lethbridge put a finger on Scully’s lips and she tasted something oily, organic. She tried to twist away but the woman pressed harder, bending to her ear and hissing. “Your partner doesn’t care about you. He only cares about what you represent to him. He cares about the outside of you, about what you look like. But he doesn’t care about you.” She wiped her finger down Scully’s chin and something warm oozed down, dripping onto her chest. “Now, if you’ve quite stopped complaining, we’ll begin.”  
Scully whipped her head away and tried to push the chair back. “Begin what? I’m a federal agent, you can’t keep me here. You’ve already committed a felony and if you lay one more finger on me, you’ll be facing some serious jail time. Untie me and we can end this now.”  
Miss Lethbridge turned away and busied herself behind the towering glossy leaves of some exotic looking plant. Scully couldn’t see what she was doing but a powerful aroma, spicy and piquant, rose on the tepid air. A few minutes later she brought a bucket and secateurs to where Scully was trying to free her tired limbs.  
“It’s very satisfying, isn’t it? Ripping and shredding fabrics, removing the heavy burden of cloth that covers up our true selves. Your husband, Rob, he wore beautiful garments, he is a beautiful man, but inside, where it counts, he was weighed down.”  
She cut through Scully’s blouse, buttons scattering across the floor. “Where is he? What have you done with him?”  
“Shhh,” Miss Lethbridge said. “He went out. In his shiny car.” She cut through the sleeves and let the silky fabric fall to the floor. She pushed her hand into the bucket and brought out a poultice, smoothing it up Scully’s arms, over her chest and shoulders and down her back. The smell was overpowering and Scully coughed and gagged. “You have so much time left. Time to fly free.”  
The substance dried and Scully’s skin tingled. Miss Lethbridge had removed her own clothes and painted her skin and she was holding her hands up to the heavens, humming and swaying when Mulder burst in. His gun trained on the woman, but his eyes frantically checking on Scully.  
“I’m fine, Mulder.”  
“You’re too late,” Miss Lethbridge said, as the officers with Mulder launched themselves on her and grappled her to the ground. “She’s going to fly high, fly free. Away from you. Away from all this. Just like the others.”  
Mulder holstered his weapon and freed Scully. He yelled for paramedics and she didn’t resist. Her body felt sluggish, her skin was on fire, her throat dry. She wanted to vomit and she swallowed the bile down as Mulder held her.  
“Scully? Can you hear me?”  
She could, but she couldn’t speak. She let her eyes shut.  
When she opened her eyes there was only bright white. No green, no growth. Just the comforting smell of antiseptic, clean, safe. Mulder’s voice was dreamlike, outside the curtains. She turned to see if there was water and lifted her arm to reach the plastic cup on the small table beside her gurney. She stared at her arm.  
Mulder pulled back the curtain and smiled that goofy grin, striding in two lengths to lift the jug. “Let me, Scully.”  
“Mulder, my arms…”  
“Here, drink this. Slowly, Scully.”  
She sat up but her head pounded and she sunk back against the pillow. She looked down at the gown, falling open to reveal the skin on her chest. “Fuck! What the hell, Mulder?”  
“Hey, it’s okay. Everything is okay. It’s just cosmetic.”  
She ran her fingers over the down that covered her arms and chest. She felt under the back of the gown and the same soft feathers covered her back and shoulders. “What is this?”  
“Your wings, Scully. Your angel’s wings.”  
“Oh my god. Those blooms in the garden. Were they…?”  
“Cecilia Burdenstock, Maxine Jenniss and Carlos Romero.”  
“How?”  
“The old case files, Scully. There were several documented cases where people believed they could become angels and the plants Lethbridge used for the poultice were several species from South America renowned for their speedy growing properties, others for their ability to soften and smoothe skin. Records showed she’s been importing seeds for years.”  
“So there might be more victims?”  
He offered her water and she drank gratefully. “Maybe. Forensics are going over the property. The greenhouse you were found in was astonishing. It was under the house, Scully. There were plants in there that may not even be documented. Preliminary reports say that some of the plants may be hundreds of years old. And the only records of a Dorothy Lethbridge show that she was born in 1878.”  
“None of this makes any sense, Mulder. I have feathers on my skin. How is that possible?”  
“She was trying to free you from my evil clutches,” he said, sitting on the chair next to her. The vinyl creaked. “You were going to fly with the angels.”  
She reached out for his hand and it felt real and smooth in her grasp. “When I get out of here I’ll have to take you up on your kinky offer, Mulder.”  
He lifted her hand up to his lips and pressed a kiss there. “Always ready to serve you, Scully.”


End file.
